SOURCE: www.buffalo.edu

December 19, 2016

Growing up in a single-parent, low-income household, Colt Cotten forged his own path to success: https://t.co/xUEEdACi0G pic.twitter.com/15LAJjIowu

— NCAA Wrestling (@ncaawrestling) December 20, 2016

Colt Cotten could easily have been a statistic, another kid from a single-parent, low-income family who never fulfilled his potential. But something drives Cotten each day to try to be the best man he can be: the fact that his father wasn't.

"Whenever I thought about doing something stupid, even now, I say 'Don't be like him,'" says Cotten, a senior wrestler whose goal is to win a national championship come March. If he succeeds, his mother, Fawn, and grandfather, Robert Yerger, will be there to congratulate him. Cotten's father won't have a clue. Rodney Lawrence Simpson has been in jail since shortly after Cotten was born. (Fawn gave her son the surname of an ex-husband instead of taking Simpson's.)